Heart of Stone

14/10/2010

As you would expect, we here at DigitalEdge are reasonable, thinking people. We like science, and we're not superstitious. We understand that the base of human personality and emotion is the brain, and that despite the popular association of the heart with feelings, it's really just a mechanical device, an organic pump to deliver blood around our busy bodies.

A 15-year old Italian boy has just become the first person to be fitted with a permanent artificial heart. Such technology has been used temporarily in the past to tide people over while they wait for a transplant, but never before been fitted to last someone their whole life. But the boy has a muscle-wasting illness which would make it impossible for him to adapt to a transplant.

The device is just 2.5 inches long. It doesn't replace the gammy heart, but goes inside it, connecting up with aor-oh this is too gross to type, just read the story.